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New submitter eeplox writes "I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefishfiling claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me. I disputed their claim with YouTube's system — and Rumblefish refuted my dispute, and asserted that: 'All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish; Content Type: Musical Composition.' So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."

Oh not at all, you see, unless you're a big corporation with a lot of lawyers, you can't own any content. So they look "oh it's the little guy again" and "yeah this content would be nice to own" and with that, it's theirs.

Of course I'm also sure that none of this has anything to do with the fact that YouTube gets a cut of those ad proceeds. And that a small user posting original content would probably opt not to insert ads, such that YouTube would be then getting a cut of zero.

I'm also willing to venture that after going through the figleaf of a process of he-said, she-said, he-said, that there is little recourse. My guess is that any future attempt by a little guy to appeal/refute/re-dispute a big copyright holders' refutation of the original dispute will fall down some big black rabbit hole of non-responsiveness from YouTube corporate bureaucracy, complete with lack of any personal points of contact for trying to actually resolve this.

Of course I'm also sure that none of this has anything to do with the fact that YouTube gets a cut of those ad proceeds. And that a small user posting original content would probably opt not to insert ads, such that YouTube would be then getting a cut of zero.

I kind of doubt that's it. I mean sure, they get a cut of the ads, but YouTube actually has to care about what YouTube users think. There is, after all, no ad revenue if people stop posting new videos.

It seems to me more likely that the entertainment industry is behind it. Recall that YouTube has been trying to get Hollywood to let it compete with Hulu. Of course, Hollywood is run by tyrannical despots who claim to own everything anyone has ever created, so this sort of behavior is right up their alley. And, Hollywood has never cared one lick what the users think about it.

I mean think about it: Who is more likely to demand something user hostile? A company that makes its living based on users liking its service better than those of competitors, or a cartel that makes its money by filing lawsuits and screwing artists out of contractually agreed royalties?

Until there's a reasonable alternative, people aren't going to "stop posting new videos".

YouTube's revenue is now all about their deals with other content providers, because their ad revenue is going to stay pretty stable (or go up).

This story, about Rumblefish claiming to represent the owner of the rights to a birdsong makes me sick. I think the target of our anger should be Rumblefish entirely. They're the bullies. They're the bad guys.

This is only partly a job for Anonymous. I don't know who Rumblefish really represents, but I'm guessing that somewhere down the line is someone who cares what the public thinks. Maybe it's a record label who has an artist who makes them a lot of money. A targeted campaign directed at that artist might well make an impression.

We're just going to have to make an example of some people to make doing business the way Rumblefish does business unacceptable. I don't know enough about them to know who to target, but unless we cause some pain somewhere, nobody's going to care. We have seen wealthy, powerful organizations brought to heel recently by public outrage. We're going to have to unleash holy hell on somebody, somewhere.

Class action lawsuit? Great idea. Then youtube users can get zero dollars (since it is a free service) and some lawyers can rake in big bucks if it works out.

Dummy, if "some lawyers" can do a good enough job to win a class action lawsuit and turn Rumblefish into a smoking crater, then they have earned the money.

The "youtube users" weren't getting any money anway, so who cares if they still don't get money? The guy in this story just wanted to put up a nice video of him walking in the woods. He wasn't looking for "any money".

I guess Rumblefish is just going to have to decide they own the name "Linux" and all distros and force every repository to shut down and force all distros of Linux to carry an indelible advertisement for Windows 8 before some people are going to wake up and realize how urgent this is.

Ack! I wish this hadn't been marked as "Insightful," although I understand why... there have been a lot of shitty plays in the copyright world, and there are some big organizations that are clearly threatened by the Internet and Internet culture. Righthaven and others have (rightfully) made a lot of people very skeptical.

But... that's not what we do.:) Rumblefish works specifically for independent artists, not labels or rights organizations. The company has been around for over a decade, helping get independent music placed in films, advertisements, etc. It's still a very small company -- the founder and owner (also a musician) has posted here on the thread, and I'm around to answer technical questions about how the pieces fit together (IANAL, but I am the Lead Architect -- look me up on the Rumblefish website).

It sucks when things don't go right, especially when it's such a hot button issue, and we're really interested in doing the right thing -- both for independent musicians and video creators. We're working on resolving the issue with eeplox's video. We're here in the thread to answer questions.

Believe me... everyone wins when good music is inexpensive and readily available on YouTube.

The folks from Rumblefish are trying to do damage control - which at this point, any reasonable company would do.

It is possible that the "reviews" were done by an automated system on their side, which would be bad.

It is also possible that the "reviews" were done by a lazy human on their side who if there is any justice in the world, is in the process of being fired.

If the former case is true, it was a bad business model by the company which is now coming back to bite them.

If the latter case is true, then the company representatives posting here may just be decent people trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Either way, I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt. If the bogus infringement notices continue after this, we can break out the pitchforks and torches - otherwise it can be counted as a lesson learned.

Again: Your company lied on the review, and tried to claim birdsong as your own whilst defaming eeplox by accusing him/her of being a pirate. I hope you feel ashamed of the place you work for, and the way in which it just tried to misappropriate revenue from work you had no part in. I only wish there were criminal sanctions for the person at your company who made the false counterclaim refutation; it isn't at all reasonable to have believed it was copyrighted/represented by yourselves.
Please explain how the decision to make a refutation was determined, given that it is a legal statement.

All the emoticons typed since the internet began won't change the fact that this is, in fact, what you do. Your company is engaging in scummy behavior and you're defending it with a shrug off "It sucks when things don't go right."

Oh, I just quoted you. Maybe you can come after slashdot for the ad revenue whenever someone reads my post.

"As of November 2011, the company's assets are subject to confiscation by the US Marshals Service due to expired debts from legal fees to a successful defendant.[6] In January 2012, its domain name, righthaven.com, was sold at auction to an undisclosed purchaser to help satisfy its debts.[7]" h/t Wikipedia

This isn't going to be a short war. It's going to have to be something we're going to fight over and over and over. But even when it's asymmetrical warfare, there is a boundary condition after which certain business models just aren't worth the hassle. You find some names to drag through the mud, and you keep dragging them through the mud until it becomes a media story, and then they over-react with a libel suit or something and then it's game over, we win.

Do you understand that this "Rumblefish", these slimy pieces of shit who are probably well-known child molestors (the reason for their secrecy), do you understand that they forced Google to take down a completely original piece of work, something that somebody made, that contained no copyrighted material just by claiming it was theirs.

They do this and there's nothing that's safe. Even if you own something and you've got a piece of paper saying you own something, they can just clap their hands and take it away.

Rumblefish endangers every artist, every musician, every writer. They do not respect the rule of law, or even what's right. They just take what they want. And in this case, Google is complicit. So there we go: Google. Maybe it would make Google uncomfortable to be associated with these (alleged) child-molesting creeps at Rumblefish, but the least we can do is hang it around their necks to see how they react.

I read a lot of yadda yadda about how "big government" is taking away our rights and all about the "second amendment" and how big tough-talking freedom-loving Libertarian gun owners are going to face down anybody who's gonna threaten their liberties. Well here it is, you simple fucks. Here it is. Big as life and twice as ugly. If some faceless company can decide that, no, you don't really own those things you made with your own two hands, they belong to us, then your Second Amendment sacred right to feel manly with some shootin' iron don't mean a goddamn thing.

"As of November 2011, the company's assets are subject to confiscation by the US Marshals Service due to expired debts from legal fees to a successful defendant.[6] In January 2012, its domain name, righthaven.com, was sold at auction to an undisclosed purchaser to help satisfy its debts.[7]" h/t Wikipedia

Or tell them that, while you cannot boycott them any more than you already do, their behaviour just earned The Pirate Bay or EFF another donation.

Supporting organizations who don't believe in copyright such as The Pirate Bay does not help protect copyright holders such as the YouTube video submitter. I don't wan The Pirate Bay profiting from my work any more than I want rumblefish profiting from my work.

In fact I think on principle Rumblefish is doing precisely what we as consumers and content producers have been demanding from the media industry: innovative ways for them to profit from their work.

What Rumblefish does is allow artists to profit from YouTube videos through YouTube ad revenue. Nobody gets sued, people can post their home videos with copyrighted music for free and the artists get paid. That's an excellent solution to the desires of consumers and content producers.

The *PROBLEM* is that Rumblefish is claiming copyright on other people's work. That's completely unacceptable--it's piracy. And that's what needs to be stopped.

"The *PROBLEM* is that Rumblefish is claiming copyright on other people's work. That's completely unacceptable--it's piracy. And that's what needs to be stopped."

They need to be fined the same amount, or more, that any normal citizen would be fined for an act of piracy. But of course that's not going to happen, Rumblefish gets the high court treatment. Notice how they have CNBC at the bottom of their page, like I said, they get the high court treatment. They won't get fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per infringement, that only applies to us commoners.

Hey there, it's Paul Anthony....the guy you want to send creepy letters consisting of cut up letters from magazines...I know, you were probably just kidding. I'm the Founder and CEO of Rumblefish and saw this thread and it seems to be getting rather heated up so I thought I'd chime in, answer whatever questions I can and make myself available for a little while (have to eat in a bit) if people have questions....which it seems like they very much do.

I'm not sure where to start b/c so much has been said but eeplox, if we have indeed mistakenly been sent a claim by YouTube's Content ID system and are inaccurately claiming a video...we'll release it. Our mission is to license music rightfully in order to compensate recording artists for their work. Claiming anything that other people / companies / organizations own is not what we're about. Rumblefish is an independent music company...not a large media conglomerate. We aim to do right by creators of all kinds.

If you were really Paul Anthony, the first thing you'd do is get a login. The second thing would be to link to your Slashdot posting from a site known to be managed by your company, so we'd be able to identify that posting as real.

Hey Bruce -- we've met a few times at open source / security related conferences in the early 2000s, although I'm not sure you would remember me. My work was with the Immunix Linux distribution, and some other Linux-related startups.

I can vouch for the parent (#39168105) being Paul Anthony, CEO of Rumblefish. I'm the Lead Architect at Rumblefish, and we've been working on this issue this evening. Forgive him; he's a musician, not a geek.:-)

if we have indeed mistakenly been sent a claim by YouTube's Content ID system and are inaccurately claiming a video...we'll release it.

He's treating it like a one-off. The claims so far are that the bird song was "reviewed" - if it was reviewed by a human then this should never have happened. Humans make mistakes, but confusing a bird song for a human performance is beyond the range of reasonable human error - suggesting a process where the human has been removed. Something we absolutely know happens with the big-time members of the MAFIAA in their over-zealous pursuit of pirates because they have admitted it in court in more than one case.

So the real problem here is the process and simply "releasing" one falsely claimed video is to miss the forest for the trees. The only satisfactory response is to explain what happened and then to take steps to make sure that it never happens again.

Forgive us for being a little short in our responses -- it is a complex issue, and we're working through it on a Sunday evening.:)

The YouTube content identification and dispute resolution system is not a simple one; right now we're focused on resolving the critical issue with eeplox. This is something that will unfold over the next couple of days, and we'll be doing what we should -- make sure we figure out exactly what happened, and put guards in place to prevent it in the future.

Forgive us for being a little short in our responses -- it is a complex issue, and we're working through it on a Sunday evening.:)

I suspect you are bing disingenuous here. Why have you and your CEO been posting here without first checking the YouTube video and "releasing" it? There are complex issues here, but there is one simple issue: whether this particular video has any copyrighted material that you control. The fact that you and your CEO have spent your Sunday evening posting in/. before checking the specific video speaks volumes about your priorities.

No. This is NOT a complex issue. You claimed ownership of something that was not yours. Sure, the first time was an automated script. However, the SECOND time was apparently by the "copyright owners" and they verified ownership. This was a lie.

So, it boils down to this. Your company which supposedly represents artists is engaged in piracy. You are stealing IP from others by claiming ownership even when it is obvious to any sane human that it is not yours.

It is not complex. It is very simple. It is pre-school simple. You are thieves hiding behind a corporate mask.

In this case, Rumblefish thinks that it's God, so it claims the bird chirping as their property

I think a more reasonable explanation is that their algorithm mistakenly flagged the audio track as a match, then when the poster challenged this their system automatically sent a "please listen and compare" message to the copyright holder of whichever work it is. The copyright holder has not done their due diligence (at all, it seems) and has simply clicked the "yes it is ours" button.

The problem is with the stated policy and reasons for posting the advertisements. If they treated posting differently then the stated policy, they would have to either change the policy ot explain why. In this case, they chose to explain why which turns out to be a crock of crap highlighting the vary essence of the problems with automated infringement systems and the corporate drones claiming ownership of everything.

Which would be conspiracy to defraud. Other than your sarcasm, this isn't actually to far from that. Google makes money on false claims, the media company makes money on false claims. They claim it was reviewed. The claim of it being reviewed, and if it not in fact copyrighted, that attaches intent. The counter claim would have to be 'error'. However to go to court and claim error of the reviewers, in the case of birdsong, would be tantamount to claiming abject incompetence, bringing in to question every other alleged review.

I'm glad you asked, and I didnt go and put this in the first post as to not get off course.

It's not going to end. I predicted 'this' pretty much a decade ago. Any company who chose to get in bed with the media companies and start to proactively 'censor' would soon run into the gaping maw of corporate greed and be faced with 'you aren't doing enough'. Sadly, it's worse and will be worse. The media monsters want carte-blanche to expunge anything they deem damaging to their failing business model (rightly or wrongly). And even if you were to sue google and the media companies, they would just demand the laws get rewritten to allow them to get away with it based on some meaningless threshold that wont even amount to a slap on the wrist. They have already crafted an atmosphere in which 'look ppl we don't care about and end up firing anyway are gonna lose jobs because of blahblahblah.

Its part and parcel of the mindset that bundles boatloads of crap into your cable TV package you don't want, for the 6 things you do, all the time claiming they not only can't do anything about it, and that all the crap you dont want is in fact good for you.

I did some negotiation with Rumblefish and Paul about 5 years ago when I ran a digital music company and I have to say that in the sea of bloodsucking fucktards that exist in music licensing Paul and Rumblefish were a breath of fresh air. They were the only company I dealt with that actually gave a flying fuck about their artists and were always very supportive of up-and-coming bands. Hell, their entire business model is around putting unknown artists on soundtracks, or in commercials, and henceforth are actually supporting the artists in a way that previously only the major labels would do.

All of that being said, it is obvious Rumblefish fucked up this time. Who knows exactly why, but they did. I think it is important that before crucifying them you understand that the service they provide is extremely valuable to artists not on a major label.... so at least give them that.

And before the venomous masses can call me a shill or whatever: we actually never did business together, nor did I remain contact with Paul, and so I have no reason to defend them other than what I stated above. People and companies fuck up some times. I have a feeling Rumblefish will learn from this mistake.

It depends how you take the quantifiers.:-) In first-order logic, "all As are Bs" is automatically true if there are no As. In the case at hand, there are no content owners, because nobody owns the bird songs (not even the birds). So, all content owners have reviewed the video and confirmed their claims. Likewise, all content owners have seven legs.

This is the findamental problem with the USA system that "free" and "public domain" are not "owners" so they have no rights because public domain can't hire lawyers... As much was said when Lessing tried to argue that Public Domain needed a voice in copyright legleslation to the SCOUS.

So pretty much the first person to record and file gets the copyright... The law has no mechanism to verify that "nobody" can claim something...

In the case at hand, there are no content owners, because nobody owns the bird songs (not even the birds).

Not true. The content owner is the person who made the recording. It is copyrighted, and the owner can potentially pursue a claim against Rumblefish for infringement if Rumblefish has placed ads on the video and profited from it by claiming it's theirs. My law firm would be interested in representing this uploader (and others). That's the kind of case we would love.

Next letter:
Please identify exactly what work I am infringing, as my attorney is having difficulty finding similarity between my soundtrack and any performance by artists represented by your organization.

Hey it's Paul Anthony from Rumblefish. This claim has been released by Rumblefish as it was both A: improperly ID'd by YouTube's content ID system as a song from one of our artists and B: one of our content ID representatives mistakenly reinstated the claim. As soon as it came to our attention today that we had made a mistake, we promptly released the claim and I reached out to eeplox via YouTube to let him know.

I've been responding in an/IAmA on everything here:http://redd.it/q7via

This isn't a DMCA notice, or a case of someone filing (under penalty of perjury) a notice that they own the material and demanding you take it down.

This is an issue of YouTube's user agreement and the way YouTube shares revenue.

When you upload content to YouTube's site, you obviously agree to allow them to show the video.

YouTube also has a separate revenue sharing program, where you can get revenue from your videos - but YouTube is NOT obligated to do this. They could simply run ads on your content, say screw you, we're not giving you any revenue share, and keep all the revenue for themselves.

What YouTube has done is put in place a program where content owners can have YouTube automatically match content on their site with the content owner's content. YouTube has chosen, in the event such a match is made, to give the content owner the OPTION of allowing the infringing content to stay on the site and getting the ad revenue share instead of just having the content removed entirely.

So you're in a grey area - no one is asking your content to be taken down, so there's no DMCA request. YouTube has just agreed with the 3rd party to share the revenue from your content with the 3rd party - which is YouTube's perogative since they can do whatever they want with their ad revenue. If you don't like what they decide to do with your ad revenue, your recourse with YouTube is simple: Don't put your content there.

I'm guessing that YouTube really just didn't think through how their program actually works when bad actors are introduced (ala rumblefish). If YouTube were smart, they would realize Rumblefish is a bad actor and kick them out of the program and force Rumblefish to submit DMCA notices instead.

Except in the Wild West, the townsfolk could form up a posse and ride after those highway robbers and lynch them when they caught them.. Can't really do that so much now, unfortunately.

You may have heard of this group, "Anonymous"?

The governments of the world no longer have any claim on the concept of "justice", having ceded their moral authority to the highest bidders (usually corporations, who can outspend all but the wealthiest individuals). As a result, anarchy has become far more fair than the codified pro-corporate bias we can expect from the courts (regardless of country).

In less than 200 million years, since by then Earth will have been rendered virtually uninhabitable from the point of view of intelligent animal life by the constantly rising power output of the Sun. So, nothing to worry about.

In all honesty though, I really with it was more feasible for people to actually fight back against these large corporations. It's really a shame when all you need is money to hire lawyers and you can do anything.

Don't sue youtube. That would be under the ToS. Sue the party that claims to have reviewed the audio and decided you are infringing their copyright. That sounds like a lie that damages your reputation. In other words libel (or slander, I forget which is the written form).

I'm not a lawyer, I don't even play one on TV, but this seems like the kind of thing you could take to small claims court for say $1000 or so and win.

Of corse you would be better off with a lawyer, but I don't see how you could sue for enough to actually pay the lawyer. If you have access to a free half hour consult or something you could ask a real lawyer, they might have a different opinion.

Copyright is STRICTLY for the benefit of society. If we didn't think it profited us, we'd just steal all of everyone's crap (and, in some cases, society would vastly benefit; anything having to do with music, not so much). Mark my words, industry: copyright means NOTHING if it's abused and it justifies my attitudes on the subject (y'all know what i mean)

Actually, music itself would likely benefit greatly, just not the labels. As piracy has already demonstrated, free access to studio recordings has made the consumer perception of the value of live concerts greater. That is why ticket prices keep outpacing inflation.

Anecdotally, I've personally noted a pretty good number of once free venues switching to cover charges for better known (locally) acts which are remain unsigned by major labels. At least on my personal scale, this demonstrates positive force towards greater valuation of live music.

Lower prices and increased distribution of copyright material increases the overall quality of published works. A great example is the textbook versus subject oriented paperback categories. Textbooks exist in an overpriced, price fixed copyright vacuum. Their quality continues to remain virtually unchanged for 30+ years, making occasional incremental improvements and frequent vast drops in quality. On the other hand, books written for the layman about various sciences and arts continue to improve, drop in inflation adjusted price, and increase in availability. The very pressure of reduced prices and increased availability forces authors to review their peer / competition work and produce something better.

In a contest of douchbaggery between the RIAA and Monsanto... I'd have to say the RIAA wins. Monsanto loses points because they do actually produce something truely useful, while the RIAA member's only purpose is to sit in between artists and listeners and take a cut. A position that made perfect sense pre-internet when getting music distributed required a substantial investment in disc manufacture and trucking, but is increasingly obsolete now.

Contact your US senator and House members. It won't do any good, but it is very easy to do. If enough voters do this it can have an influence. It's like voting; if you don't bother to vote you have abandoned your right to have an opinion. Posting on Slashdot will get you exposure, but I don't see how it will help much.

Step #1 is to contact your representatives, yes. I would expand it beyond simply the three who directly represent you and include anybody in your state's delegation, particularly those who support nonsense laws that make things like this possible. No reason not to expand it even more than that if you want.

Step #2 is to see if you can get a news organization to bite. There may or may not be any traction here, but it's worth the effort.

Step #3 is to lawyer up. Try to find a lawyer who won't take a fee up front, either one who takes a cut of the winnings or one willing to do it pro bono. It shouldn't be too hard considering this is pretty much a guaranteed victory. You already have evidence of their outright fraud. In particular you already have them stating on the record that they investigated the matter -- meaning when you prove it is bullshit, you're already 90% of the way to proving they did it with malicious intent. If this process is some sort of automated DMCA frontend, you've got them for fraud under the DMCA as well and can seek punitive damages for the abuse of process.

More to the point, they'll never let it get to trial. What jury in the world is going to believe the idea that some idiot can come along and get 130ish year exclusive right to the generic sound of birds singing--thousands of years into recorded history and hundreds of years after audio recordings became possible? It's not going to happen and they know it's not going to happen. They're counting on being able to bully and intimidate you into doing what they want and like most bullies, confronting them is going to send them running for the hills. In this case, it will likely send them running with a nice little check in your pocket for your troubles.

It's a hassle, yes; probably more hassle than it's worth. It's a risk too, which is why it's important to find a lawyer who will work for a cut of the settlement rather than a hourly fee. You certainly don't want to be bankrupted by winning. But it's also the only way there is any chance of this kind of idiotic bullying to stop. Maybe you can't afford to fight; maybe rolling over and letting them have their way is the best choice for you in your situation. Nobody will judge you for it. But if you can fight, fight. These kind of victories are victories for everybody, not just yourself.

Yet bird songs might copy each other's tunes. So his bird song might sound the same as one they recorded. This is because birds have no copyright and reproduce other bird's songs as their own. They then use this to attract a mate and pass the other bird's intellectual property to their kids. Not only do they steal other birds song, but they show that if copying songs is legal, it makes all the birds lazy and not want to come up with new songs. This is why pirates always carried parrots on their ships. The parrot is the most efficient bird at stealing songs back when we didn't have computers and the Internet.

What's not explicitly mentioned is whether the bird sounds were recorded at the same time as the video, or whether they were dubbed in after the fact.

If the latter, it's entirely possible that he's using a recording that was made, and consequently copyrighted by someone else.

Movie and TV producers have been dubbing in bird sounds for decades, including one infamous time [nwsource.com] when CBS backed a golf match with the sounds of birds that have never lived anywhere near the game's location.

Anyhow, the point is that while you can't (yet!) copyright a bird song, you can copyright a specific recording of a sound.

(none of this should be taken to mean that Google does not have it's head up its ass.)

Assuming that your video was recorded in the wilderness, you can sue for "slander of title", like in SCO vs. Novell. All conditions are met: A false statement was made to a third party, claiming that you are not the copyright holder. The claim is malicious since they cannot reasonably believe they are the copyright holder. And finally there are special damages, since ads are added to your video and the revenue is sent to them.

Get a lawyer. Get him now, because there are deadlines and the law takes deadlines very seriously. Ask the EFF or ACLU, they often love cases like these, and they have a couple really good lawyers.

Have your lawyer send them a cease & desist letter. You will need that later.

From what you describe, you should start in small claims court, which will very likely result in a default judgement in your favour, because most companies don't bother with defending themselves. If they cease&desist, sue them for whatever ad revenue they illegally made. If they don't c&d, sue them for the lot.

With the default judgement in hand, escalate. Sue them for copyright infringement, fraud and whatever else your lawyer comes up with.

Don't forget that copyright infringement is a criminal offense, too. And thanks to the content mafia, the penalties are considerable.

The one thing you shouldn't do is lie down, do nothing, or delete your video. On the contrary, why didn't you post the link? A quick/. effect later and there'd be many thousand views and the damages for your case would be there.

I'm Peat Bakke, the Lead Architect at Rumblefish. I write a lot of the code that manages our music catalog, as well as interfaces with our partners (like YouTube), so I'm intimately (painfully) familiar with how all of these pieces fit together, and who's responsible for what.

First things first -- eeplox, I'm sorry this has been a shitty experience. Clearly something has been missed, and I want to make things right. Please contact me directly at peat@rumblefish.com, so we can sort out exactly what's happening with your video.

Automated content identification is a hairy problem, doubly so when mixed with synchronization (soundtrack) licensing. YouTube's system is one of the better ones out there, and even so, we get a ton of false positives coming out of it every day. The biggest source of false claims come from covers and samples, where it's particularly difficult to determine if the soundtrack for a video is or isn't in our catalog.

That said, we do listen to each disputed claim that reaches us, after YouTube has gone through their (rather terse) automated resolution system. We're working with YouTube and our other partners to make the process simpler and less legally threatening... but we're the small fish at the table.

It's worth mentioning that Rumblefish isn't a subsidiary of a major label, media conglomerate, or rights organization. This is a very small company, founded and owned by an independent musician, and half our staff play in bands or work in independent film. We've focused specifically on independent artists who want their music to be used in soundtracks... and for what it's worth, yes, there are several tracks that sound like birds chirping.:)

Regardless -- the media licensing industry is a horrible, horrible mess. No question about it. Our mission is to make it easier for independent artists (music and video alike) to make a living doing what they love, and it genuinely sucks to hear when people are let down.

I'm happy to answer questions about how we do what we do. IANAL, of course... but I am a geek.:)

All...
I wrote a pretty heated email to Rumblefish earlier, and below (with his permission) is the response I received from the CEO Paul Anthony.
--
Jeff

Hey Jeff, it's Paul Anthony, CEO and Founder of Rumblefish. I have to say, I appreciate your passion for what you believe is right and your willingness to go to bat for it.

I just caught wind of the thread going on at Slashdot and have started replying to posts. It's very important to myself and everyone at Rumblefish that we do right by creators. If we have in fact been sent a claim from the YouTube Content ID system that has been misidentified...we'll happily release it. I'll make sure we look into it, and are doing so now.

I'm gathering from the thread that the issue is obviously over singing birds....sounds like an outside case to me that we represent birds singing in nature....but in cases like this it could very well be A: Something completely different in the work B: A simple mistaken piece of content by the YouTube content ID system or an error on our part.

Before you launch a full fledged, and rather passionate by the tone of your email, assault against my company...I'd appreciate the opportunity for my team to actually look into this. We're a group of people who love music, love content creators and show up at work every day to do right by our artists and labels by sending them royalties for the use of their music.

Mr. Bakke, please explain how submitting the note "All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content" is possibly acceptable when no one's reviewed it? This makes your company look awfully bad.

Alternatively, if someone did review it and sign off on that reply, then I hope this will reflect properly on that individual and their career at Rumblefish, as I'm pretty sure that this at least makes your company rather vulnerable from a publicity point of view, if not a legal one. If you're outsourcing this... then really, I hope your company can learn its lesson QUICKLY.

Many of those responses are pre-canned in the YouTube system, so unfortunately we get stuck when it comes to the responses. Even in clear cases of infringement (which this is not), terse and threatening legalese doesn't help anyone -- not us, the musicians, or the video creators.

We're looking forward to having a direct relationship with the people who use music from our catalog. Music copyright, particularly synchronization rights, are a highly charged topic -- legally and politically. If we can make it easier and safer for people to find and use the music, everyone wins.

We'll sort out exactly what happened, and set it right with eeplox directly.

We'll sort out exactly what happened in the next couple of days -- I really wish I could have a clear cut answer for you right now.

I completely agree on your point that it's a serious problem. I joined the company last year because they're out to fix an industry that's fundamentally broken and frequently abusive; that's why I'm spending my Sunday night trying to sort this out.

Anyhow -- I know this doesn't directly address your concerns. Sorry about that. When there's more to share, we'll figure out the right place to put it.

Don't lie is a good start. Not you, Peat, but whoever claimed that the content owners reviewed it and certified it belongs to them. That sure SOUNDS dishonest, here. Reminiscent of the whole mortgage robosigning business, to be honest.

I don't have any issue at all with content owners protecting their rights. The problem is that content owners are often quite indifferent to trampling the rights of others. It's good that you're sorting this out, but really, if I get tagged inadvertently in the same way, do I have to get my story on slashdot to get it fixed? One would hope I'd just file a dispute and a real, live person would look at and see it doesn't belong to you guys. And by the way, that should be the default. Unless you're SURE, you let it go. We have stuff that sounds like birdsong isn't good enough.

I, too, am a geek. But I don't speak for my company. And you might want to think twice before you speak for yours. While you are trying to do the right thing, I assure you, somewhere in your company the legal department is figuring out an appropriate response. The CEO is likewise either shitting his pants, or seeing dollar signs. Either way, its his call, not yours.

Personal feedback might be nice for you, but either the CEO falls on his sword or the lawyers win.

Also, your company swore that it listened to and confirmed a violation of the audio. I assume you take personal responsibility for that? That you had a hand in creating that system, know its failings, and would swear that it is imperfect?

Or maybe you just want to improve your software. It's a nice gesture, but quite out of place. A personal reply might have been better. Going public was probably not the best way to get better.

i was having trouble with youtube flagging all my uploads of original live material as warner and other shitty faceless corporations properties
every time i sent emails to the companies and youtube requesting the exact time of the video and infringing song
after about 1000 emails, 1 got 1 reply, pointing me to an exact time in a video, so i listened to their track and the 22 seconds of my video
my 22 seconds was a bass drum playing on every beat with a white noise filtered with a lowpass filter, no melody, no music (and there was nothing similar in the pointed song besides there was a kick on every beat)
so i decided to test the content ID, i uploaded 15 minutes of ONLY a 909 bass drum playing on every beat (not even a 8th bar 4th beat 1/8th note, juste plain four on the floor
it was flagged by 13 entities (my most flagged video ever) and they ALL confirmed their claim to my 909 playing alone while i was preparing supper
that proves that:
1- the content ID system is crap
2- nobody ever listens to the content when you make a counter claim
3- youtube sides with the "record companies" and shit in their users face

Well I contacted Rumblefish about this, and this was their reply.On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 6:50 PM, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

How do you go about copyrighting sounds from nature?
Do you have to pay royalty's to the original artist (the bird, or a babbling brook for instance)?
If so how do you know you have the right one (in the case of the bird) or molecules (in the case of water)?
If you are not paying the artist aren't you stealing from them?

Hi Richard,

You have a completely legitimate question here. How would we pay this bird...seeds perhaps?

This was an obvious mistake by the YouTube content ID system. When we became aware of the problem, we acted quickly to release the claim. We have contacted the video creator to explain and to apologize for the mistaken attribution made by the YouTube content ID system. The whole situation is a little embarrassing and we certainly did not mean for it to happen. We just want to fix it, so we thank you for helping bring the problem to our attention.

We are serious about paying artists (have been for 15 years), and about letting bird songs remain in the public domain. There are enough people robbing the natural environment; we want the birds to feel free to sing without copyright claims filling up their nests.

Thanks to the slashdot effect, Rumblefish has now released my video and their ads were removed!
It's good to know that these intellectual property management companies are capable of doing the right thing (when a ton of public scrutiny rains down on them). I got this message in my Youtube inbox:
"Hello, it's Paul Anthony...the CEO & Founder of Rumblefish.
Hey there. I just personally watched the video of yours that you posted about on Slashdot where you're picking and eating a wild salad. There is clearly no music in your video and I just got off of the phone with our tech lead who I asked to release the claim that was made by the YouTube system and associated with Rumblefish.
We're not sure why the song was ID'd. My apologies to you for the inconvenience that this has caused you. I'd like to help make that right for you in some way.
I have been spending the last several hours responding to posts on Slashdot and emails that countless people have sent to our email addresses b/c it's important to me and the team at Rumblefish that we always do right by content creators, the ones that we represent and the ones that we do not.
My apologies again and best of luck to you. If there's anything else that we can do to help make things right, please do let me know. Here's my email address: paul@rumblefish.com
All the best,
Paul Anthony
Founder & CEO, Rumblefish
Sent to: eeplox"

There's a lot of threads here and on other places, hopefully this sheds some light on the claim process, and what happened with eeplox's video.

Here's the sequence, as best as I understand it:

- eeplox posted a video to YouTube that contained bird sounds.- The automated YouTube content identification system mistakenly assigned it to one of the tracks in our catalog.- eeplox contested the automated claim, which sent it into the manual review queue.- One of our reviewers reinstated the claim, which triggered the response eeplox received and posted above.

When we heard about the story on Slashdot, we reviewed the video and released it.

TL;DR: We messed up during the manual review process. We've cleared eeplox's video. We're working on fixing the manual review process.

I'm here in the discussion to answer what questions we can. We're not interested in screwing over independent musicians and video creators, and we want to be as open as possible about what's going on.

If you run into content claim issues with our catalog on YouTube, you're welcome to contact us directly at YouTubeContentID@rumblefish.com. We have a FAQ about the process here: http://rumblefish.com/id/youtube-content-id.php [rumblefish.com]

The core point doesn't work. If bird songs are copyrightable, then different people can hold copyright on different bird songs. If someone patented the idea of recording a bird song, you could claim prior art by pointing to anyone who recorded a bird song before the patent.

You're legally in the right but is it really worth your time to fight it? Just delete the video from YouTube, edit the audio on your original video with some voice annotations or something to change it up a bit and re-post.

Since obviously Rumblefish is using your recording, sue them for any "royalties" collected
based on your work.

First of all, send them legal notice that they are collecting royalties on your work without your authorization,
then if your videos gain sufficient popularity, so they actually collect $$$, sue them for
the ad revenues they collected + other offenses.

Whether it is worth going to court over.. different story.But HOPEFULLY the damages are enough to at least pay a lawyer to take the case.Assuming that Congress wasn't bribed to make the damages so small as to be effectively worthless...